Wanting a quick idea to practise using nouns, verbs, and adjectives?
the grass
glitters
its forest
Carol Bevitt, Susan Eames, Helen Laycock
I call these tribbles. Ask your class to write a noun, a nature word, on the top of a piece of paper.
Ask them to pass that paper to the child behind them, or at a suitable distance.
The new child then adds an action on the next line. You can, if you wish, have a pool of verbs for them to draw from on the whiteboard, so obvious verbs are not chosen. This can also be achieved if the first child folds their paper so the noun is not visible.
Then the paper is passed on again to another child who writes the conclusion, based on the first two words. Ask them to use a noun or an adjective and a noun in the last line, and to keep it as short as possible.
Show them these examples to give them the idea:
The Volcano
belched
behind a hand of smoke
Susan Eames, Helen Laycock, Liz Brownlee
Tadpoles
wriggle
into frogs
Sherri Turner, Carol Bevitt, Helen Laycock
A bee
fuzzbuzzes its way
up the lupins
Liz Brownlee, Sherri Turner, Liz Brownlee
Then get them to pass the poems on again to be read out. These little poems give a great feeling of achievement, don’t take long and usually yield excellent results – hope you enjoy them! They can be displayed in many ways and if you choose connected initial nouns can be put together to make into longer poems.
Poetry Roundabout 